Shaman Leveling: 1-29 Enhancement

29Mar

The first class I ever really tried to get into on my own was the Shaman. My first toon was a Hunter that I got to level 20, but I had no idea what I was doing and just shot things in the face until they either died or closed into melee range with me. But the Shaman was the first class that I ever did any research on to try to learn how to play it and play it well. In looking at the class my first impressions were to be Elemental or Resto because casting just seemed so much more powerful than melee back in the day, but then I eventually found out the insane burst damage of Windfury and I was sold.

I’ve leveled up a few Enhancement Shamans in my time, though none of them ever reached max level. My highest level Shaman to date was level 54, an Orc Enhancement Shaman named Belgawrath. But during Wrath my wife’s main was an Enhancement Shaman so I’m continually reading guides and blog posts about the class and spec so that I can pass on all of the important information to her.

But now the time comes once again for me to level my own, but this time I’m going all the way to 85.

Playing an Enhancement Shaman
Enhancement Shamans are a great example of a hybrid class that has a truly hybrid playstyle as well. You’re a dual wielding melee class that deals a large portion of your damage as magic damage rather than just melee. Being tied so closely to the elements also means that you have a lot of flavor in the magic that you use as well, and though it’s all elemental, it’s not all tied to a specific element.

Of the dual wielding classes you’re more closely related to the Death Knight, in my opinion, than any other. Rather than weaving diseases into your melee, you’re instead weaving bursts of elemental damage, and rather than summoning the dead for aid you call on the spirit of wolves. You’re not a sneaky Rogue, or a pansy Hunter afraid of getting hit. You might be similar to a Fury Warrior, but I’ve honestly never played one of those beyond level 14 so I can’t say from experience.

Of all the characters I’ve ever played, the Shaman gives me the strongest feeling of actually “being there” in combat. All Shamans are able to take on the form of a Ghost Wolf, but only Enhancement (early on at least) can do so instantly, and I absolutely love turning into a wolf, charging towards an opponent and unleashing my fury on them, then instantly dropping back into wolf form to charge down the next target. It might not do much for you, but I’m a huge fan.

Shamans also come with a very special class mechanic that is all their own: Totems. Totems work similar to the party/raid-wide buffs of other classes, but rather than being cast on players they are instead centered around a totem that is placed on the ground. When the totems are active, they grant their buff to a wide area. Most totems work in that fashion, providing buffs of one kind or another, but there are others that deal/heal damage or summon elemental pets for their duration as well. We’ll get into the specifics a little bit later for those you’ll actually use as Enhancement, but it deserved a mention here.

Shamans also have another special class mechanic which is their Shields. Shamans have three different Shield spells, with Lightning Shield and Water Shield available to all specs, and Earth Shield available only to Restoration Shamans. Each of these shields is built around a “charges” mechanic that has a specific effect whenever a charge is triggered to be used. Lightning Shield deals damage, Water Shield restores mana, and Earth Shield heals the target when they get hit. More on those later as well.

Enhancement-Specific Tips
As Enhancement you don’t use a whole lot of your mana during combat, and what you do use you’ll typically regenerate through your class abilities anyway. You still cast spells very frequently, but you typically don’t have to worry too much about mana. As a melee class though, you are a bit more “squishy” than many other melee classes because you only wear Leather armor until level 40 where you upgrade to Mail. But remember that Shamans are also healers, and because you’re not spending much of your mana it’s usually not a problem for you to stop the offense for the sake of casting a healing spell on yourself.

As a DPS spec you’ll typically want to use Lightning Shield to deal additional damage whenever an enemy hits you with an attack. At later levels you may occasionally switch to Water Shield instead to be sure you have adequate mana. In this level range, Lightning Shield is a passive DPS spell, dealing damage only when you’re attacked, but at higher levels you’ll also be able to trigger the charges of Lightning Shield with your attacks.

Remember that Shamans are a partially hybrid class with a very hybrid playstyle. You’re meant to be able to heal while you’re in your DPS spec, so do so. You’re not supposed to be “the healer”, but you are designed to be able to toss those heals out there when they’re needed. Shamans can be very “squishy”, taking a lot of damage in a short time, but we also pack some very efficient healing to get us through those times. At these low levels your healing spells will nearly restore you to full in a single cast. You can take that one of two ways: either you can heal in the middle of combat to be sure to make it to the end, or you can push yourself and your damage potential to be able to destroy your enemies quickly and efficiently, and then heal yourself back up to full at the end of combat.

Important Spells & Abilities
Note that all numeric values are taken from the level 29 version of the spell for the purposes of this post.

Lightning Shield (8): The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lightning. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for Nature damage. This expends one lightning ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Searing Totem (10): This totem repeatedly attacks an enemy within 20 yards for fire damage. The totem will prefer to target enemies that are afflicted by your Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects. Lasts for 1 minute.

Lightning Bolt is the ability you start off with, and what you’ll be spamming for a few levels in order to kill things quickly. As you get higher in level you’ll cast this less and less until you final get a talent that allows you to cast it instantly, but that won’t happen in this level range. Primal Strike is going to be one of your best friends in this level bracket as one of the few melee attacks you have access to. If you’re in melee range then you want to use Primal Strike whenever it’s not on cooldown.

Strength of Earth Totem is your primary Earth totem now and forever. It provides both Strength and Agility to your group, both of which contribute to your primary damage stat Attack Power. I couldn’t find the exact amount that it grants you at level 29 and neither of my shamans right now is the right level to test it to see. Earth Shock is one of your bread and butter attacks, it’s an instant burst of damage which also provides a nice attack speed reduction to the target for a bit of additional survivability.

At level eight you receive Lightning Shield which is one of your primary buffs as it passively deals damage to anyone attacking you. Keeping this buff active is a bit of a pain until level 25 at which time you can add a glyph that prevents the orbs from being expended and instead turns it into a flat 10 minute buff. Flametongue Weapon is one of our most important weapon imbues at at level 10 you’ll have it on both of your weapons. Wowhead tells me that 408 Spell Power is the value at level 29, but that sounds way too high to me so I think the numbers are wrong.

Last up on the 1-10 list is Searing Totem which is your primary Fire totem for the rest of the game. It deals decent damage for now that will increase a lot more as you get higher in level and spend talent points to enhance its effect.

By choosing Enhancement as your specialization at level 10 you receive all of the following:Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 200% of that weapon’s damage to an enemy target. Damage is increased by 40% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue.Mental Quickness: Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 50% of your attack power, and reduces the mana cost of your instant beneficial, damaging, and totem spells by 75%.Dual Wield: Allows one-hand and off-hand weapons to be equipped in your off-hand, allows you to parry frontal melee attacks, and increases your chance to hit by an additional 6%.Primal Wisdom: Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to immediately restore 5% of your base mana.Master: Enhanced Elements: Increases all Fire, Frost, and Nature damage done by 20%. Each point of Mastery increases damage by an additional 2.5%.

Lava Lash is one of our signature attacks, one that you’ll use very frequently and will be a big contribution to your overall damage. Mental Quickness is how our spell damage remains viable as a melee class that weaves spell damage into most of what we do, and it reduces spell costs by a 75% which is how we manage to cast spells as a class that doesn’t stack Intellect.

Dual Wield is another signature of our spec, allowing us to wield two weapons at once, and it’s one of the reasons I love playing this class as much as I do. Primal Wisdom relates to Mental Quickness up above, providing us with the means to regenerate our mana through melee combat so that we can continue casting spells even with a relatively small mana pool.

Enhanced Master doesn’t actually turn on until level 80, but it’s a big boost to damage once you do get access to it.

Level 11-20

Flametongue Totem (12): This totem increases the spell power of all party and raid members within 40 yards by 6%. Lasts 5 minutes.

Ghost Wolf (16): Turns the Shaman into a Ghost Wolf, increaes speed by 30%. As a Ghost Wolf, the Shaman is less hindered by effects that would reduce movement speed.

Wind Shear (16): Disrupts the target’s concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school form being cast for 2 seconds. Also lowers your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you.

Earthbind Totem (18): This totem slows the movement speed of enemies within 10 yards of the totem. Lasts for 45 seconds.

Water Shield (20): The caster is surrounded by 3 globes of water, graning 15 mana per 5 seconds. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, mana is restored to the caster. This expends one water globe. Only one globe will activate every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Flametongue Totem is great for spell casters, but not a huge benefit to us as Enhancement. When I’m grouped with two or more casters I usually use this one instead of Searing Totem to benefit the group more. Flame Shock is our other bread and butter shock that we’ll use all the time. Flame Shock is best used on targets with large health pools, such as dungeon bosses, so that it will be active for the 18 seconds it takes for its full damage to take its place.

I decided to list Purge here as an offensive dispel, which I don’t often do. For the most part you’ll cast this in PvP to remove buffs from enemy targets, but there are some buffs you’ll want to remove in PvE as well. Since PvP is definitely a viable option for leveling your characters now, you’re going to see me mentioning things like this more than I used to. Ghost Wolf is a wonderful movement speed buff, allowing us to take on the form of a wolf to move faster. That second sentence in the description above means that you cannot go below 100% movement speed while in Ghost Wolf form. So you move at 130% normally with the buff, and you cannot be slowed below the 100%. Note that that applies to effects, not conditions, so you’ll still be slowed by things such as being in water.

Wind Shear is primarily used for its spell interrupting feature, though it does also reduce your threat in a group setting. I primarily use this on crowd control spells being cast on my party (like the Sleep spell cast by the Druids in Wailing Caverns) or to counter healing spells. In PvP you can use it on Player Pets that you haven’t generated threat against to cause them to stop attacking you. An experienced PvP player will quickly put them back on you, but you’d be surprised how many players don’t notice. Cleanse Spirit can remove Curse debuffs cast on you or your party, which is actually pretty common. Even though you’re playing a DPS spec it’s good practice to be in the habit of dispelling Curses as you can save your healers time and mana.

Earthbind Totem is somewhat situational. It’s a great totem for PvP, especially to slow Flag Carriers or pursuers of your Flag Carrier, or for allowing you to escape a deadly situation. In PvE it can slow mobs who run away when they’re low on health or it can be used to get some distance between you and your attackers to get a heal cast if you’re in danger of dying. Water Shield is the alternative to Lightning Shield, but not typically used by Enhancement. If you do find yourself in need of mana then you can certainly switch to Water Shield to get it back faster. I often switch to this shield in LFG in my upper-20’s as I start using more of our mana-intensive spells for AoE damage, but for soloing and questing I stick to Lightning Shield.

Water Walking (24): Allows the friendly target to walk across water for 10 minutes. Any damage will cancel the effect.

Frostbrand Weapon (26): Imbue the Shaman’s weapon with frost. Each hit has a chance of causing additional Frost damage and slowing the target’s movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds. Lasts 30 minutes.

Chain Lightning (28): Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 55 to 61 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects 3 total targets.

Fire Nova (28): Causes the shaman’s active Flametongue, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem.

Frost Shock is another spell that I mention primarily for its usefulness in PvP. Slowing targets is a pretty big deal in a lot of PvP matches and talent points can be spent to make it freeze your target in place instead of just slowing them as well. In PvE it’s really only useful if you need to stop runners; Earth and Flame Shocks are more useful in PvE.

Water Walking is a cool utility spell that allows you to move on water. It’s great for certain PvP Battlegrounds and has some small usefulness in certain dungeons as well. For PvE can save you a little travel time prior to having a flying mount by letting you cut across water without being slowed down. Frostbrand Weapon is one you’ll only use in PvP as all of the other imbues offer better damage, but in PvP this can be a really good enchant to roll with.

Chain Lightning is our first AoE spell, and an interesting one in that it’s more multi-target than AoE. You’ll only really use this one in LFG or perhaps in PvP, unless you’re a AoE crazed leveler like myself in which case you’ll use it all the time. If you do use this one often then you’ll want to be sure to use Water Shield to keep your mana supply high. Fire Nova is our first literal AoE spell, dealing damage in a ring around our Fire totems. Searing Totem is our primary Fire totem when soloing, but it doesn’t allow Fire Nova to be cast through it, so you’ll need to remember to plant the right totems to use it, and the nova is centered on the totem itself, so you’ll need to drop your totem near your targets for it to be useful.

[NOTE: At level 29 you should replace Primal Strike with Stormstrike. Remove PS from your bars completely and forget that it exists. The two share a cooldown and are designed such that Stormstrike takes its place for Enhancement. Stormstrike is a better ability in every possible way and should be used from level 29 on.]

Questing Single Mob
In this rotation you’re just going to destroy targets as fast as possible. If you’re using heirloom weapons then I definitely suggest you stick to using Earth Shock as your go-to shock spell, but if you’re not using heirlooms then you might find Flame Shock to be a better option for the opening cast as it’s DoT damage will add up over time to be even more than Earth Shock. Any shocks you cast after the first one should be Earth Shocks though, unless you missed with the Flame Shock cast.

Questing Multi-Mob
If you know that your’e going to face multiple mobs, or multiple groups of mobs, go ahead and cast your totems before you get started on the actual combat. Just remember not to drop aggressive totems (like Searing) until you’re within range for it to hit your target(s) and you’re ready for combat to start.

I don’t suggest you intentionally get into combat with multiple targets as Enhancement unless you’re using heirlooms or are over-geared for the mobs you’re facing. Shamans have some good healing spells and a lot of utility, but they’re also pretty easily killed in this level range if you’re taking sustained damage.

If you do have good gear and decent survivability though, I suggest you go with this rotation. The point here is primarily to get Flame Shock cast on all of your targets so that they’re all taking damage, and then speeding up their deaths with your melee attacks. Light one up, bash them in the face a time or two, switch targets and repeat.

If you need to heal in these situations, go ahead and do so. If you find yourself running short on mana because you’re healing go ahead and switch over to Water Shield for the mana return and switch back to Lightning Shield when your health and mana are at a more manageable level.

LFG Trash
This one is the same as solo questing, except that sometimes you might want to bother with totems and others you might not. I don’t cast my totems by default at this level when I’m doing LFG, instead I wait to see how quickly we’re progressing through the instance. If we’re moving at a fast pace then I usually don’t bother with any of them until we see a boss. If we’re going kind of slow or we have people who are /afk or something, then I’ll go ahead and drop the totems to increase everyone’s performance.

For most trash pulls though, just stick to Earth Shocks and using your melee strikes as often as possible.

Wind Shear: Deserves a special mention here though. Shamans have crazy-good spell interruption capabilities thanks to Wind Shear. If you see a mob casting spells, particularly a healer, interrupt as many of their spells as possible. If you’re in instances with caster mobs who are especially annoying (LOOKING AT YOU, WAILING CAVERNS DRUIDS!!!) then be sure to make use of Wind Shear when they’re casting the spell you don’t want to go through.

LFG Boss
For bosses you want to maximize your DPS potential. That means that you’re going to make sure Flame Shock stays active on the boss as long as possible, and that you’re going to utilize your totems for the good of your group.

Totems: Strength of Earth, Flametongue, Healing Stream

Using Searing Totem will give you a higher, personal DPS score on a boss fight, but if you have at least one caster DPS in your group then you should probably lean towards Flametongue as both they and the healer will benefit from it as will you, though to a lesser extent. If there are no caster DPS in the group then switch your Fire totem over to Searing and drop it right next to the boss when you move into melee range.

Once Flame Shock is dealing its damage you’ll start rotating through your melee attacks and casting Earth Shock as filler while you wait to refresh Flame Shock. If you time your shocks just right you can get two Earth Shocks off with almost perfect timing for your shocks to refresh just as Flame Shock ends, allowing you to reapply it immediately with no time lost.

Wind Shear will still work on many boss abilities at low levels, so be ready to use it when you get the chance as Shamans have a fairly flexible and laid back rotation at this point. Spells you want to interrupt in particular are healing spells and AoE damage spells such as Chain Lightning. I could go into specifics, but this is a class guide, not a boss guide, so just use your own judgement.

Elemental Weapons 2/2: Increases the passive bonuses granted by your Flametongue Weapon and Earthliving Weapon abilities by 40%, the damage of your extra attacks from Windfury Weapon by 40%, and the effectiveness of the ongoing benefits of your Unleash Elements ability by 50%.

Ancestral Swiftness 2/2: Reduces the cast time of your Ghost Wolf spell by 2 seconds and increases the movement speed by 15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

With Lava Lash being a staple attack and the fact that you get it at level 10, this is my first choice of Prime Glyphs, increasing its damage by 20%. Next up is Stormstike, though you don’t get that spell until level 29, as the bonus crit can be useful. Finally I have Flame Shock listed though it’s important to note that it’s really only useful in LFG boss fights or in PvP as typical mobs and dungeon trash will not live long enough for even the normal duration to matter.

Lightning Shield is overall going to be the most useful glyph for you here; it’s how you turn your Lightning Shield into a solid 10 minute buff instead of lasting only for three hits worth. Ghost Wolf is my next choice because moving faster is always a good thing, both in PvE and PvP. Frost Shock deserves a mention for those of you interested in getting into some low level PvP, though I would generally suggest Ghost Wolf above this one.

Fire Nova is probably the best investment if you’re looking to beef up your AoE ability in dungeons by increasing its radius and taking away the hassle of replanting your totems. Chain Lightning is one I haven’t used myself, but it deserves a mention for AoE if you enjoy it.

I’m a huge fan of getting rid of reagents, so Water Walking is the definite first choice here. Arctic Wolf is a simple vanity glyph that just changes the way you look in Ghost Wolf form. The only other Minor Glyph available at this level range is Thunderstorm which is a spell that only Elemental Shamans can use, so it’s completely worthless to you.

Gearing Up Your Shaman
As Enhancement your primary stat is Agility. Each point gives you 2 Attack Power and it also boosts your Melee Crit (and Dodge). Intellect boosts your Spell Power on a 1:1 ratio, and it also increases your Spell Crit and your mana. Strength is a decent stat for you as it still gives a 1:1 ratio for Attack Power, but it’s not something you really want to seek out unless you just cannot find any Agility pieces at all for those slots.

You also want to look for gear with Hit on it in particular since you take a penalty to melee hits for dual wielding. You don’t need a ton of Hit to get you by while you’re leveling, but if you find some good Agility pieces that also have Hit on them then be sure to pick them up.

For green gear with random enchants you’re probably most interested in “..of the Falcon” (Agility and Intellect), “..of the Tiger” (Agility and Strength), and “..of the Monkey” (Agility and Stamina).

As you get into running random dungeons you’re looking for items with the “..of Agility” and “..of the Bandit” (Agility, Stamina, and Crit) enchant on them from the Satchel of Helpful Goods.

There are two ways you can look at gearing up your low level Shaman. You can either go for maximum killing potential, which is stacking Agility above all else, or you can go with a more balanced build where you look for gear with both Agility and Stamina. I prefer maximizing my damage potential, personally, and going for good survival pieces in slots that I have no Agility piece to fill in. If you’re not used to healing on the fly as a DPS spec though, you might want to lean more towards survival.

Dungeon Gear
There are a lot of good pieces of gear that you can find in low level dungeons, some of them pretty decent and some rather outstanding. I’m not going to go into detail as far as which pieces to pair up from which dungeons to get a “best in slot” list, but I will give you a list of the items that if they dropped for me, I would consider rolling on if they were an upgrade to what I currently had.

A lot of the “good” lower level gear is tuned more towards Strength, which is still good though it’s not great. Agility is where it’s at, so don’t pass up an Agility piece for a Strength piece unless the value is at least twice that of the Agility piece.

The last two items are both quest rewards, but the same quest and rewards exist for both factions.

The Defias Leather set is a great set to have, unfortunately the Chest is no longer available in the game now that Cataclysm has replaced the final boss. The four remaining pieces are still very good, but they all have low drop rates. The good thing about this set though, is that it’s all BoE so you do have a chance of finding it on the auction house.

Cobrahn’s Boots are a quest reward, available to both factions. The Embrace of the Viper set is an example of the exceptional armor. Unlike the Defias Leathers from Deadmines, all but one of the pieces from the Embrace set are BoP, so you’ll have to farm all but the Gloves yourself if you want them, but the drop rates are significantly higher than the Defias set.

These are all really great items, especially the legs and helm. As a dual wielding class Hit rating is important because you take a penalty for wielding two weapons, and both of these pack a great amount of Hit as well as exceptional Agility and Stamina.

The Charged gear by itself looks pretty crappy, I know. But, the random enchant on it can be exceptional. You’re looking for “Charged Gear of..”: the Tiger (7 Agi, 7 Str), the Falcon (7 Agi, 7 Int), the Monkey (7 Agi, 7 Stam), Agility (10 Agi), or Strength (10 Str). I listed those in the order I would personally rank them, with “..of the Tiger” coming out on top as it provides a total of 21 Attack Power.

Both of these items can be purchased with Honor, and you can get all the honor you need for them in about 2-3 Battlegrounds worth of fighting. The run speed on the boots is particularly worth looking into, even if the stats themselves aren’t as great as other boots you might already have.

There are two versions of the necklace, one for each faction. There are also multiple copies of them for different level ranges, so you can also get one of these for other level ranges, including level 19. You’ll have to travel to Ashenvale to purchase this as Alliance, and Northern Barrens as Horde since they are sold by the Warsong Gulch vendors.

The Boots come in multiple names as well as two versions of each for their respective factions. They also come in multiple level ranges just like the necklace, so you can keep coming back at different level ranges for definite upgrades, though you can’t get them for lower than the 29 bracket. To purchase these you’ll have to travel to Arathi Highlands for both factions, as the Arathi Basin vendors are the ones who sell them.

12 responses to “Shaman Leveling: 1-29 Enhancement”

Thank you for a wonderful post. Wish I had read that when I was starting. Character has hard to learn the hard way – over and over. Has been struck by lightening in the horns more than once. But, now other characters seem a bit easier in comparison…thanks again.

The Shaman really can be somewhat of an overwhelming class to play sometimes. They really have a lot going on and if you try to manage it all before you’re ready they can easily become more taxing than they are enjoyable.

They aren’t like Mages where you spam a single attack and occasionally throw another spell into the mix when you get a proc, instead they focus on a pretty good sized priority system. They aren’t the most complicated class in the game, but that big tool belt sure makes it look like it sometimes.

If you’re looking for simple to play classes, I really think you could have a blast with a Paladin (Prot or Ret) or a Mage (Frost or Arcane).

Thank you – you’re right about not being the most complicated, but again, I’m not exactly superlative myself! I have a level 32 prot/ret Paladin who’s been on the shelf for a bit; have guildmates who have been leveling theirs very successfully in battlegrounds; however, not sure that’s the way I want to go. If you have any suggestions on ‘building a tank’ I would appreciate it.

Back in WotLK I leveled a Shaman but he was Elemental and I only took him to 22.
I remember there being a point (i think 8-12 or some such) when it was a bit rough because the best offensive spell was still a beginning level 1 spell and there were no healing spells available yet.
But after 12 or 14 you got the healing and it was all good.

I notice you haven’t touched your Fire Mage in a while. Are dropping it or are you going to get back to it? Did you get sick of the RNG?